I use the textures in fungus-eaten wood, worn shells, fried food, cracked paint, and eroded sand in my sculpture and photography. I start first with an interesting detritus and then see if I can make it into something. Often the temporal nature of these materials, certain physical limits, and visual clues overpower or ruin the pieces. Sometimes my process is as simple as taking a photograph of a texture-built miniature “landscape,” and other times I spend a year shaping rotted, holed wood into fairly elaborate forms. I am specifically interested in how decrepit materials have energetic marks resembling brushstrokes, drawing marks, or even better, the look of aerial landscape or fossilized earth. Different markings can mimic burning, erosion, camouflage, stucco, and glaciation. I hope the finished pieces allow for enough of the material and form to meld so that it is as if these pieces just appeared by the hand of nature or were found like fossils.
McMansion 5, 2005, Lambda print, 36” x 57.5” ed 3 (top)
VW Bus, 2007, pecky cypress, cypress, steel, 75” x 165” x 64”
LEE STOETZEL